Una maravilla a un lado y un bosque al otro (4)

Hey! Thanks for checking out blog post #4 from Panama. It's hard to believe, but only 1 more month of Central America before I head back to Princeton. Wild.

Alright so this update picks up over spring break, when I had the pleasure of my parents, brother, and the bro's gf visiting for most of the break. It was great to see them, hang around the city, and even show them a bit of the rain forest. However, the coolest part was definitely crossing the Panama Canal..

Some fun facts:
>The French tried to build the canal first. They attempted to blast through 50 miles of solid rock. They failed.
>U.S. engineers developed a far more elegant solution involving two sets of locks that raise and lower ships across the isthmus, using gravity to move water.
>After its successful completion, the canal was billed as arguably the most impressive engineering feat ever and the 8th wonder of the world.
>In 1928, British adventurer Richard Halliburton - a Princeton grad! - paid a whopping fee of 36 cents and became the first (and only, it's now illegal) human to swim across the canal.
>The Panama Canal uses the same iron locks today as it did when it first opened almost 100 years ago.
>A current expansion project (due to finish in 2014) will allow the canal to handle the ever-larger container ships being built.

For more background on the canal, I recommend checking out my big brother's well-written, informative post here.

Getting back to our crossing: As we embarked, I was really excited to get a better idea of how a ship 3x as long as a football field could be hoisted up and down just by water power. Our trip started out on the Pacific (south) side of the canal, where our passenger boat steamed ahead toward the famous Bridge of the Americas. It was cool seeing (and passing!) all the giant boats patiently waiting their turn to enter into the canal, which saves them roughly 8,000 miles of travel and hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintenance costs by providing a direct conduit between the world's two great oceans.

As we got to the first lock, our guide explained how the immense amount of water in the Chagres river provides the incredible power that raises and lowers the dozens of monstrously big ships that pass through daily. Via vents in the bottom of each lock, water rushes in or out of a lock to move the boats 27 feet vertically in just 8 minutes. That sounds pretty slow, but having seen & experienced it, that's actually a remarkably fast rate!

Our boat shared a lock with a larger ship (the canal obviously tries to maximize the number of vessels that go through), so we were able to observe first-hand how a ship gets through. I'll spare you a detailed explanation of the process, but there's a cool little simulation here.

Some pics from the crossing:


me & the bro


the panama canal is the only place in the world where a ship's captain is required to relinquish control of his vessel.. he has to hand it over to a specially-trained canal pilot. here's the big-shot pilot for our boat, about to board


a big cargo ship coming the other way, 20-some feet above us


the boat we shared a lock with.. notice how close the edges of the boat are to the sides of the lock!


the lock gates are HUGE


Bridge of the Americas


Next topic - our third class is taking place on an island called Barro Colorado, in Gatún Lake. BCI is a sweet place, because there's really great rain forest and a ton of amazing flora & fauna that are super easy to study - they're literally right next to the field station. Our course is focused on the ecology & evolution of predator-prey interactions, and we're working in groups to study predator response in howler monkeys, agoutis, and tungara frogs.

My partner and I chose to study howler monkeys and see how they respond to different jaguar models.. The idea is to see if the monkeys exhibit different anti-predator responses according to the presence or absence of three-dimensionality in a predator stimulus.

Translation? We're scaring the bejeezers out of howler monkeys using a huge stuffed jaguar. As you might imagine, it's really really fun.. Here's the jaguar we've been using to scare the howler monkeys:


J-Diddy

We'll also be using a 2-D version of the stuffed jaguar and a flat, rectangle-shaped control to try to see just how good monkey vision is.

I'm not really feeling the writing flow too much today, so I'll spare you some verbage and leave you with neat videos of (a) a devil dance we saw at a festival in Colón; (b) howler monkey alarm call (showing monkey); (c) howler monkey alarm call showing J-Diddy the jaguar; and (d) leaf-cutter ants in Gamboa.. They're all short!

I have really bad luck with uploading videos to blogger.com, so I've put the videos on youtube.

Devil Dance
Howler Monkey 1
Howler Monkey 2
Leaf cutter ants

Los bichos marinos (3)

What's good everybody.. Spring break is here, we've finished up two classes, and the stay in Panama is halfway over! I haven't posted for a while so I've got a lot to update you on BUT first, major props to Princeton Men's basketball for their stylish W yesterday over Harvard.. Check out the winning buzzer-beating shot if you haven't yet. I've watched this so many times.. So proud to be a Tiger right now.

Alright so we just finished up our three weeks in the coral reefs.. The first leg of the trip was to the San Blas islands where the Kuna Yala - a native people of Panama - exercise self-rule and preserve their unique culture. To get there, we had to fly in this super-sketch airplane that was probably made in the '80s. It had like algae or fungus or something growing on the wings, this retro wood paneling along the sides, and pilot controls that looked like they were made for a toy.. However, 25 minutes of exhilarating flight and we were in San Blas! At the airport island where we landed, we were treated to some traditional Kuna dancing.

Close by the airport was the tiny island, which (like many of the 300+ islands in San Blas) was smaller than a football field. We stayed at a little Kuna- run hotel with no internet, running water, or round-the-clock electricity.. the toilets even flushed directly into the Caribbean! Despite the lack of normal amenities, the island was actually really awesome. In addition to the friendly Kuna, we had two dogs, two cats, and a personable little parrot to keep us company.



Ok as for the reefs - so, so amazing.. I knew coral reefs were the tropical rain forests of the ocean or whatever but there's nothing quite like being surrounded (literally: under, above, and to either side of you..) by the dazzling array of colors and life found on a reef. I saw wayy too many species in San Blas to name (and the species list to your right is woefully incomplete) but some of my favorites were parrotfish, lion fish (introduced), french angelfish, the slippery dick (i promise it's real), a spotted eagle ray, a spotted drum, and some way cool squid.

As much as the species richness in the water bowled us over, San Blas is actually home to pretty degraded reefs.. The Kuna rely heavily on the sea to eat, and as a result they've fished out almost all the big predator and herbivore species that are normally found on healthy reefs.. Because the big herbivores aren't there to eat the algae (normally responsible for only 10% cover on a pristine reef), algae has taken over where coral used to be and the whole system suffers.. Also, the absence of sharks, big jacks, hefty snappers, and other top-dog predators was noticeable. The San Blas leg showed us first-hand how tough conservation challenges often involve a balance between people's needs and the environment's health.

Although it was a bit sad seeing the reefs in a less-than-ideal state, there were still so many other positive things to focus on.. Like the Kuna culture and the beautiful molas the women embroider, the absolutely picturesque beaches where we got to eat lunch, the bath-tub warm water in the shallows.. Maybe most of all, I loved that "going to lecture" meant learning about coral reefs over breakfast, in bare feet, with a dog and cat playing under my feet and a day of boat-riding & snorkeling in tropical waters ahead. You know those get-away advertisements with the white sand beach, the coconut trees, and the teal/aquamarine waters?? That's where we were.


the good life on San Blas

Ok, Part 2. After San Blas and a quick pit-stop in Gamboa, we headed out to Coiba, Panama's biggest island and a formerly notorious prison. Until 2004, the island housed a number of penal camps where some of the most ferocious criminals, and later Noriega's political prisoners, served harsh sentences. Stories of tough prison gangs, beheadings, and hangings abound.. But the good part of that past is that, because Panamanians always kept clear of Coiba, the natural environment today is virtually untouched.. And now Coiba is one of the most important nature reserves in Latin America!

We quickly learned that one of our island neighbors was Tition, a huge >7 foot american crocodile.. Park rangers feed him fish and raw meat, so he's learned to hang out near people (not great). But, it meant that we could get some cool views and pics, like this one:



Right after our first time snorkeling around Coiba, the difference in the reefs was obvious for two reasons: (a) different species of fish and coral and (b) a stark contrast in the quality of the reefs. The algae cover was greatly reduced by enormous parrotfish and other herbivores and the predatory fish were MUCH bigger and more abundant than they'd been in San Blas. We saw whitetip sharks, jacks, snappers, and moray eels patrolling the water... oh and also SEA TURTLES. I swam with some greens & hawskbills and two little hawksbills even let me touch their shells. unreal.

The only bad part was that, part way through the trip, the jellyfish community decided to invade our snorkeling sites and torment us.. A couple of the times we went out, we literally got stung every 10 seconds - on the arms, neck, face, chest.. Aaah those little cretins were so miserable.

Our last day at Coiba we visited one of the old maximum-security prisons.. It was eerie to see the run-down building with its bare concrete, rusting iron bars, and painfully cramped cells. One of the guards told us all about the horrific violence that occurred once upon a time within the prison walls..

But an unexpected and very beautiful side of the visit was seeing some of the hopeful art - unpreserved and fading but still visible - made by some of the prisoners in the midst of brutal conditions.


This means "With the fear of the Lord men depart from evil" (Proverbs 16:6).


This painting contains phrases that mean "There is no friend like Jesus," "God is Love," and "Jesus is our Savior"

Part 3 (hang in there, almost done). To finish our trip we headed to the Azuero peninsula to stay at a beautiful tuna-farming facility. This trip was inspiring for two reasons: (1) The Irish-American that runs the lab is basically trying to find ways to produce cheap, sustainable tuna that could change the way the world gets protein. (2) The same guy is doing a really neat re-forestation experiment.. If his idea works (and it looks very promising), cattle ranchers - instead of cutting down forest - could plant hardwood and lumber trees that would provide habitat for animals, restore forests, and result in 10x more income than cattle grazing does. Money trusts could absorb the set-up costs and provide loans during the 35 yrs it takes the trees to grow.


little tuna guy

That's it for now! I'm currently chilling at a hostel in Panama City, waiting for the fam to show up and being taken care of/gently chided by the maid who alternately calls me mi amor or mi corazón.

Oooh and my friend almost got hit by a sloth falling out of a tree.. this video of the dazed sloth gathering his bearings is really cool/funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rly4Hpz74RI